


in double-dutch

by ferrassie



Category: Mad Men
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2011-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 15:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferrassie/pseuds/ferrassie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about two beginnings already in-progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in double-dutch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mizBean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizBean/gifts).



There are fireworks around them and the language crawls over her skin. She wishes she were anywhere else, out from between these girls. Can’t even say her name right.

“Elizabeth.” A tap on her shoulder. “Elizabeth.”

She shakes her head, hand twisting around her glass. “It’s Betty.” Voice struggling over the noise. “I’m Betty.”

 

She keeps her hands to her chest. Prayer position. The organ’s shrill over the congregation, around their bodies. Anita’s foot nudges her calf.

This is no way to focus. To talk to someone. To ask for something.

The father’s voice slowly disperses the notes. His call to communion lilts out; the same call every Saturday. Peggy sits back gently on her calves, then the pew. Her mother and Anita stand up.

She folds her hands in her lap.

 

She feels fingers at the nape of her neck, closing carefully around the pearls there. A sip of champagne against her lips. She was taught how to tell them off between wardrobe changes, exactly just what to say, but she can’t find the words. She wraps hers around his, instead. Hard.

When he looks at Betty, at the curls pinned back and the neckline of her dress, his mouth goes a little sick. Twisted and curved into a horrible smirk.

“Leave me alone.” Tone understandable, if not unmistakable.

He lets go, turns away. Her glass knocks back against her teeth.

 

“It was a lovely service.”

Anita cheeks are red from the cold. The taxi glides through water and spray. Peggy can hear it just over the sound of the crowds. The crowds in restaurants, in bars. “It’s the time for renewal.” Sounds a little wistful. Gray-black outside. Wet.

Light pours across faces on the street, the smoke from their mouths. She sighs and Anita’s eyes sharpen, hone in. Mouth in a distasteful little moue. Anita picks at her skirt and raises her question.

“So, what are your springtime resolutions, Peggy?”

The car stops and people amble through the crosswalk. Handbags, furs. What other twentysomethings do for fun. She presses her temple to the cold-damp window. That little well of superiority she has seems to dry up faster and faster.

Because it’s more than that.

Her mother fixes her with an almost disinterested look, but she knows better. Seen that look used on new ministers and new neighbours. Anita, she’s part of the bloodline. Peggy expects it.

She shrugs. “I haven’t thought about it, really.”

Can taste that out in the back of her throat. Bitter.

 

The girls told her about an American bar around here. Ex-GIs and university students and not-so locals on holiday. Hang around with imported beer and talk about baseball. Betty doesn’t really care. She needs a drink, a cigarette, and a trip home.

(She doesn’t exactly get the things she wants.)

Someone is playing a rag on the piano – drunkenly, Betty figures – as she navigates around elbows to get to the bar. Thick overhang of liquor. The bartender has something inked in black on his arm. A decoder of sorts, if she’s being romantic.

“Sweetheart,” he says, when he notices her. “What can I get you?”

She rolls her eyes, keeps her gloves on. “Mint julep. Easy on the ice.” When she reaches for her handbag, she catches the faint smell of lime and pepper and the set assistant who kept swabbing her with that awful perfume. His eyes trailing over her wrists, scared.

Drink on a cocktail napkin. He slides it to her.

 

She takes her hat off when they step into the building. TVs loud in the stairwell, ABC and CBS and NBC in-stereo. Anita presses past her, heels insistent on the stairs. “Don’t want to miss _The Untouchables_.” The swing of her skirt rounds the corner.

It’s quarter-to-nine. Peggy doesn’t say anything.

Her mother brushes a stray lock of hair away from her face. Gentle touch. Unreadable expression. “Stay for hot chocolate?” Like she’s going to say no. Lines of her face.

“Of course.”

She was.

 

She doesn’t notice him at first. He blends in, indistinguishable. Parted hair, collared shirt. He looks at her like most people do, like she’s cold. A challenge. Something to be won. Worked over. She listens to the band, despondent, and waits for him to say something.

Because he will.

“This your first night in Milan?” Crystal of his glass distorts his mouth. Bit southern, Betty thinks, but she’s given up on that. Identifying. Hide-and-seek. There are days, in between the auditions and the photocalls, when she thinks about Pennsylvania, about ice-lollies and the sound of crickets. Reminders of home and boys she used to know.

She shakes her head. Drink to her lips. Handbag in the crook of her elbow. He looks at her and he’s waiting, fingers delicate on the curve of his chin. Her head feels heavy and she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t want to know him.

“No,” he says, biting his lip. “What are you doing, then?” Betty can smell the sweat from his body. It’s mostly not pleasant and she’s very aware of it, of him. Shiver of loneliness through her shoulders.

“Nothing.”

 

“I need to go, Mom. Need to get a few things on the way home.” She pushes her chair away from the table. Her legs strain a little with cramp, ankles locked too tightly together. Her mother’s picked up on her facial cues. Her new tricks.

(Distracted smile. Fingers playing behind her ear.)

“Little late for that, don’t you think?” Her veined hands tense around her mug. “Surely you can do without whatever-it-is for the night.”

Anita makes a noise from the chesterfield. Tucked up and enraptured with the picture onscreen. Pale glow etched into her face. Peggy can’t remember the last time she was that interested in something.

Her mouth goes dry and something unravels, hurt, in her stomach. Overwhelmed by its suddenness. Her mother looking at her.

“I’m sure it can wait.”

She stands up, knees jostling the table with a little too much force. Chocolate slips over the rim of her mother’s cup. It strikes her as odd, distantly, but she’s already blushing. Needs to leave now. Her mother’s face shrouded in not-quite disappointment.

Stumbling.

 

“Come back with me.” Eyes dipped, a step away from pleading. She doesn’t go in for this sort of thing. This desperation. His fingertips are gentle on the inside of her wrist. Near the lace. She shouldn’t have accepted the drink, her third julep, because they always get like this.

Around her, anyways.

She doesn’t think about it. The drag she takes off her cigarette suggests she does.

“Fine.” But she doesn’t move. She sees his smile, feels him pull away from her. And it aches, just. Blinks her eyes tightly and lets the smoke enfold her.

He’s staring too intently.

 

She’s surprised to find the train almost empty. Only eleven and still. Smells faintly of champagne and Brooklyn. Bright lights. Accidentally makes eye contact with a man, evening edition of the paper in his lap, and makes a point to sit somewhere else.

Peggy can feel him watching her sit down.

It feels too familiar.

 

She doesn’t mean to say it. “Please don’t tell me you live in a common house.” Long ago decided that she won’t be the kind of girl who’s seen leaving in the middle of the night. Sneaking around in the bathroom, under moonlight, trying to fix her hair. Hoping no one’s asleep on the couch.

She feels his arm tense around her waist. “No,” he laughs. Unsure of himself. “It’s actually the building over.” He walks her that way and she resists the urge to shrug him off, to pay half the cab-fare, to turn around and go home.

“What floor are you on?” she asks as they reach the stairs.

“Top one.”

His smile is crooked. Charming, in the right light.

 

She hurries under the lampposts, thin soles of her shoes soaked through. Peggy fumbles with her keys at the door, coat half-open.

The block is silent.

Peggy can’t breathe by the time she gets upstairs. Ruffled. It’s dark and she struggles to find the light. Fills the room up suddenly.

Empty teapot on the table. Dried-out tea.

There is nothing wrong with the things she wants.

 

His skin is slick. He’s out-of-breath. She reaches for the cigarettes on the mattress, just to the left of her head and thinks, maybe this meant too much to him. Thinks, maybe this didn’t mean enough to her.

Maybe, this time, she shouldn’t have. Again.

Brief flicker of warmth from the lighter. He smiles at her, close-lipped, but her mouth is already around a cigarette.

Betty watches him falter.

**Author's Note:**

> little bit of a depressing way to go, but i hope you've enjoyed it nonetheless (because i know that i very much enjoyed writing it). happy yuletide and happy holidays!


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